The Grunt
by Re Lupa
Summary: Meet the Grunt. Recruited to save the world; actually not too good at it. But he pulls through anyway. Within the First Star universe.


_A short story._

Written with pleasure by the author known as Re Lupa.

* * *

_Meet the soldier. Recruited to save the world._

_Actually not too good at it. But he pulls through anyway._

Within the **First Star** universe.

* * *

**GRUNT**

Chapter 1:

**Black Moon**

A sound crashed into the back of his head like a head-on in multilane traffic.

Red light sparked round hard edges and the unsettling black frames pointed to the floor. Tension in a shoulder marked hot lines up the back of his neck and he rolled an arm. Twisting his head to the side, the flicker of red and shadow crawled the hunched figures up the walls. A huff blew out before he could hold it in.

They were watching him. Even the ones staring at the door.

Breaths came hard and fast. The grip of his gloves pulled on the skin in a way that raised arm hairs. Sweating, the sleeve against the split visor of the helmet drew his eyebrows into a heavy scowl. Right, the headgear. His forehead itched.

The door fell open and like knights in a medieval fair clapping coconuts for horses his squad erupted down the drawbridge. He followed, prepared for sunlight and almost blinded by darkness. Only the circular red light made a dent in the thick shadows by his feet. Heart pounding in his throat the heavily muscled man turned to look back. Hot air blew against his visor, bright pinpoints of light searing dots in his infantile night vision.

A plane. They'd been flying. That explained why he suddenly wanted to throw up.

A crackle in his ear drew him back to the group. Three others merged against the shadowline, the blackness of their silhouettes picked out by a quiet thought asking him to not let himself be left behind.

One of the shapes looked at him. He scanned the ground and missed his boots entirely. No need to look for trip hazards, he guessed, and walked as quietly as possible to shuffle after his team. For an outsider the situation and dynamics should have been hard to spot. He didn't know why unease curled in his stomach beside the queasy build-up waiting for a quick escape up his throat. Something seemed off. Tension in the air. Shaky movements.

The squad wasn't at ease. He swallowed.

Then came a whisper. He stood there, unsure that he'd really heard it. Groove out? Sleuth down? It wasn't - couldn't be obvious, right, of course it was. He hunched over the long piece of killing machine in his arms and sleuthed into the bushes. Move out. A woman, the squad leader.

Anna 'Shakes'. Never call her milkshake. He really didn't know what to do with that information.

The night was good cover. He knew that, deep down. Just wished there was enough light to look down at the nametag stitched just under the national flag. A finger rubbed the raised letters, a tickle on his lips as a salty droplet ran down and hung there. Cool air hissed through the leaves and stole the heated air from exposed spots in the basic armour pieces. Inner elbows, armpits, neck.

If the wind was blowing this way... A small grin lifted the stubble on his cheeks, despite himself.

_"Enemy spotted."_

Crackle. Listen hard. Nothing. No natural sound, just the breathing in his ears, in the closed helmet. He couldn't find them on his own, could he? Did this suit have some kind of radar system?

He was just saying. Crouched in the dirt, a knee slowly falling to carry some weight. He could have been better prepared.

_"Strike 1, stay sharp."_ A male voice. The radio in his headset. He listened and stayed very still. The leaves in front of his face caught the breeze and turned on themselves. He squinted. _"Multiple hostiles have been spotted in the AO. Eliminate all hostile elements with extreme prejudice. You have authorization to engage."_

Excellent. If he could work the weapon in his hands, turning everything he saw into mush would be harder to avoid than to miss. Still. As silence took the night again he felt a strange wish to hear the voice and be told what to do.

It shouldn't be this scary to be sitting in a bush. Should it?

He wanted to throw up. If he knew how to take the helmet off then the poor bush would be getting acid rain right now. Instead, the man swallowed back the bile and moved forward. Footsteps light, body clenched in to make the smallest silhouette a man of his frame could, his movements went past rock and tree. Pavement under a boot made him pause. Concrete? This wasn't a forest?

Wait. Was he near a house? A tall edge broke the short view in front. As he watched the panelled wood etched into sight, a pale ghost of a building by the inky spiked leaves. Of course. Suppose the radio-man didn't know about potential civilian targets nearby. But suppose he did.

Everyone else seemed to be fine with the situation. He couldn't hear anyone else demanding to know why they'd been deployed in suburbia. Maybe the debriefing covered this scenario. _Couldn't have had better timing_, the man mouthed.

A tiny light turned on. It glowed just by his chin as a radio crackle, sounding much like a sneeze, activated the in-helmet speakers. Not the man from before. "Strike 1-Delta, why have you separated from the squad?"

He blinked. That him. Licking dry lips he muttered just below normal voice levels, "Lost sight, Command. Retracing steps now." Not that he'd gone far.

If the bare muscles pressing against the armour plate were any sign of 'normal' condition within X-COM then his squad may have reached Alaska by now. He pressed through the foliage.

The light stayed on.

A chill ran up through the thick sole of his left boot. The dirt sounded particularly crunchy here; like chewing on ice. The tip of his gun wavered, drawing circles in the air as he thought. This didn't seem right. No scents came through the filtered air vents but the skin on his forearms prickled. Just the sensation - like he was smelling pungent mystery sauce two years out of date.

The hell? A deep breath had the distant tones of disinfectant and burnt metal. Nothing rancid.

Someone screamed. Deep concentration startled into a yip.

"Contact! Conta-"

"Strike 1!"

He was already moving. Trees and buildings glowed in sharp bursts of torchlight over the next two fences. Hands between the spiked stumps he pushed and vaulted over the first.

_Blat_. The man yelled, ducked and startled like his weapon turned into an angry goose. It clunked into the grass, clattered over pavement and stopped. Just short of a dimly-lit swimming pool. Barely a glance to the rifle, his face pressed down, hands clasped round his stomach. The scent of burning metal hissed overhead. _Blat_.

"Status!" The words came out without thinking. He looked up, visor bright in the blackened cinders of the second fence.

No voices. No human voices, anyway. A shriek chittered from behind the fence, rattled through one weird set of vocal chords.

He scrambled. Dragged the gun up, the tip scoring a line in exposed dirt by the edge of pavement. A few steps and his back slammed into the splintering wood a good length from the bullet hole. Black cinders crumbled from its glowing edges.

Breath hissed through clenched teeth, the pool water blurred in misted breath. He let himself breathe again.

Again.

"I'm comin' in!"

Heart leaping like an eagle pounding up from the ground the man whirled around and slammed into the hole. His armour broke through, not one flame touching skin, sparks fluttering in his wake.

The scene he broke into looked like the end. In the moment, gun raising in a numb hand, acid streaming up his throat, the soldier saw everything.

Two bodies on the ground. One human; blonde hair caked in green slime. Half the side gone, a red mass his eyes didn't quite focus on.

Another armoured. Hunched, even on the ground, the tiny head curved towards the blanket sky. Smoke - or was it mist? - curled in leafy tendrils around the lead-ridden monster as it lay.

Yellow spots to the left and past the trees. He couldn't look. The one holding a gun bigger than Anna had its back to him. The tiny ports, sealed against the oxygen-rich atmosphere, marked his target. A roar dimmed in his throat, the rifle up, pointing in absolute silence. He didn't sight down the barrel. Didn't plan for leading a shot.

It stood right there. He saw the big white eyes behind it, the signature tremble in her hands from across the yard. Knew she wouldn't make the shot. Squeezed every finger as a voice in his head screamed that he didn't know what he was doing.

As it turns out, his body knew pretty well. The trigger pressed down.

RATTA TAT TAT TATT.

An alien yell. He noted the depth of the call and an echo across the mist. It crumbled. Yellow ichor ran down in sludgy rivulets, holes bright in alien blood.

He saw the grin from there, too. For a moment he wondered how.

His ears stung like they wanted to stand on-end.

"Strike 1-Delta! Find cover! Get ou-"

Oh no.

Boots crunching on icy ground, a chill mixing with the burn of fear on his teeth, the man dashed straight ahead. No time to turn. There might have been cover back there. No time.

The hum of plasma through heating coils. It sounded so painfully familiar. So did the ever-so-gentle touch of a twig directly on his brain. A cry from his lips, panicked, made him think of a hyena. Crazy. He was crazy.

To be here. He didn't agree to this. Not to anything!

The only way to get out of it, though, was to win. If every hostile fell - then he could end the mission. The win-condition didn't mean every soldier needed to live.

Not himself. Not the others.

Kill everything. Not the humans, he thought. But he didn't have to save them.

They were just pretending to be human, after all.

Okay. He knew what to do.

The night looked a little darker from behind the trees. Something didn't seem right here. Nothing seemed right. He'd known that from the start but now a part of him wondered. It wasn't the mission. Maybe the squad - the outsider in an army of killers - if he could be excluded from that.

Something wrong. He shook his head. No time for that.

Shoot some aliens. The voice on the radio should have told him that. Head cocked to the side he took the chance to peek around a knobbly branch, toes deep in forest loam.

How on earth did he get over here?

The shock went through to the dirt, digging through the guts. Where was everyone? How did he run from all the way over there without getting shot? A sensation like slender twigs pulling across his eyes and scalp made him nod, hard. His gloves tightened over the grip of his weapon. Had to find the others. Command had said so.

And then kill everything. Else. The yellow-blooded ones.

This is crazy. He was crazy.

The little light was gone. No, wait. There it was. It turned on - and off. The red dot pulled his focus down. It connected to the radio, and the radio to Command... Right? And voice-activated.

The soldier cleared his throat. And the words didn't come.

A nightmare. Stupid. Disjointed. He shook his head again.

Crouched behind a tree. He stood, deliberate. No adrenalin pumped drums, called his - his name? A hand went to the nationality patch. The flag. His country. Because he had one.

He froze.

Chitters. Soft. Not the raucous, harsh squeaks muscle memorised to target practice. Almost... Questioning.

Raise the gun. It felt heavy, for the first time. An unfamiliar heat in his biceps made the rising slow. Like a dream. Maybe this whole crazy - this thing - was playing in his head. Nothing important. A smile crept onto his face, hesitant as a child going for a forbidden cookie.

Time to shoot. The little sectoid's brains'd paint the dirt into alien mud!

Pale faced, it raised puny arms as if to defend the oversized, bulging head. The step around the trunk felt huge. One giant leap. One big-ass gun. Panic zipped across the black eyes as his well-trained fingers squeezed -

STRIKE 1-DELTA

It fired.

The bullets went zinging into the trees. Its arc ranged right over the little monster's head.

What?

Everything stopped. And hard as a train derailing it hit him.

The terrified young man.

A shotgun, barely touching the scruff on the little soldier's head. Eyes hard as fired lead, barely perceptible movement of the barrel. He didn't step back. Didn't move. Don't move, you idiot. Shakey didn't miss this close. Where did the sectoid go? And, hang on - he desperately wanted to shake his head. A crinkle in his neck felt so tight, so annoying. Anna looked angry. She might try to kill him.

"Command," he said. It came out in a rough whisper. "Please don't let Strike 1-Alpha shoot me."

"Give me a reason."

Oh. "Sir-"

"You almost killed him," the voice said. "What's wrong with you?"

"He's with them." Anna almost spat it. She wasn't just angry. The look in her eyes matched the spittle on her chin.

"I'm not."

No sectoid. Angry teammates. The rifle dropped and he set the safety, unthinking. A twitch in Anna's fingers made images of bloody death dance behind his eyes. He could think of one reason why, and how. They weren't alone. None of them were safe - not yet. "Contact," he said.

She blinked. The set of her gun firmed, a nudge from her boot moving the kid out from under the barrel. "Say again." She sounded like she was daring him to.

"Contact," he said more firmly. "I'm sorry, but - there's another one. Somewhere. It got me."

"Got you?"

The radio was silent.

"Yes, got me," he said, fingers on his spare hand hooked in quotation marks. "Mind controlled me. Like from the first mission. Made me think he," pointing an elbow at the squadmate watching the shadows of the clearing, "needed shooting." That didn't seem to help. Her eyebrows narrowed. "He looked like a sectoid," he huffed. The helmet hid an annoyed smile.

A crackle announced the voice again. "Strike 1-Delta, you will submit for psychiatric assessment after this. Alpha, stop aiming to kill. Maybe maim. But I want all of you to hunt for one last x-ray, arrow formation."

"Sir." Anna's shotgun dropped at the word 'stop'. Her entire body still angled as if she wanted to strangle him with her thighs. The light question in her voice hung between them, but if Command didn't settle her down he wasn't going to say anything more. Psychiatric help. He guessed it made sense. Didn't make this little trip into crazyland more worth it, though.

At a tiny movement of her head, reddish blonde hair shifting across an eye, they formed up. He took the right-hand side, turned on the spot to face the clearing. Young Man clicked into left place. Like a real team. They made a good triangle.

As the bluish mist crept up around his ankles the soldier couldn't help looking at poor, fallen Kenny. The bright blue eyes stared directly up from an expression frozen in agony.

Anna paused at his side. She tilted her head.

"Rodriguez."

"Sir!"

"Check for vitals. Delta and I are going in."

In? Where? Behind the helmet a sense of weirdness struck him again. Such a weird mission. Not that he'd heard the debriefing, this could be some kind of anti-EXALT operation and he'd been blundering about in the bushes for half of it. The aliens, though. He spared a glance to the still-steaming corpse, its fingers clawed towards the shattered fragments of formerly-known-as-plasma-rifle. No aliens directly beside EXALT.

So, what? No chryssalids. No exploded trees or trench of a downed UFO.

Maybe he should've thought about this earlier. Maybe they shouldn't be standing in the open like this, even with the frontline monsters down.

"What are we doing here?"

"You're an idiot," Anna said.

"Alright then." He followed her past the fallen. A distant yowl raised his shoulders, an ache waking up to the small of his back. "But tell me anyway."

"But shut your mouth, soldier, until we're off the battlefield."

Her dark brown eyes looked much more challenging than pacifying.

"Protecting a VIP."

He blinked down at the radio. Oh. That sounded right.

Wait. Protecting a VIP - then where was the VIP? An escort mission without the escort?

"Contact!"

They whirled. A dark corner marked by a long, chest-high wall made of purple metal. It gleamed like venomous ink in the muted moonlight. He didn't see anything. A slow glance to 'Rodriguez', the spotter, showed a determined and clear-eyed line of sight to the contact point. He seemed convinced.

Anna's hand waved in the air. He stepped forward, boot crunching too loudly, but he figured a mega-dangerous alien would've heard the shout of contact first. A slip of a gloved finger released the safety. Teeth bared, a strange feeling of standing too close to a fire, he moved up in a slick rush. There. The feeling of twigs, sharp and razor-thin, clawing across-

"Aagh!" Blue fire. Purple fire! He beat his chest. Legs. On fire!

"Delta!"

"Contact! CONTACT!"

Fire!

"FIRE!"

For the third time he squeezed the trigger. For the second, the gun fired.

Pain. Flashes of colour. Gross, veined colour, like the underside of a tongue or the bulge of exposed intestine. It pulsated in his mind. Throbbed hard, sharp, with a distant yelp of pain that he understood completely. It made sense. For a moment, for a second, he felt the bullets - from his own gun - rip down his belly. Shatter his spine. Still feeling it. It was still alive.

That was bad. He knew that. It was in his head. He could feel it reaching, trying to do something with him. Pliable. That's what it thought. Maybe it was right. But the thing knew that blood shouldn't be outside the body. It had a good idea of what came next. That's why the thought, if you could call such a callous, shrivelled thing a thought, brought the little alien out of its huddled misery.

It couldn't move and hold him still at the same time. He took the moment. Freed lips, purple fire fanned out, he screamed. "It has her! It has her! Kill it! She's gonna jump!"

Not one human thought held back the hand of 'Shakey' Anne. Forgoing the bullets and shrapnel, her wrist whipped down with an almighty crack. White. Couldn't see.

He fell back. It got brighter. A shriek built up in his throat, the acid truly burning, a distant tickle of foam on his mouth and the air all gone. Couldn't breathe but didn't want to. It raised up - he wanted it to stop, please, please.

Crack.

Nothing.

He fell into himself.

Eyes wide, mouth working, the gears ticking back up to speed - where was she? Did it work?

Had he really just done that?

Every noise seemed kinda muffled. Like his ears were blurry. The soldier blinked, hard. It didn't actually touch his ears. Maybe dirt got into the audial receptors? Did this thing have those? Maybe just... Air holes?

Then why bother adding air conditioning and filters? Think a little, man.

Bllrrr. Bluuurhhh. Deuuuuttht. Deeelta. Delta. Delta!

"Delta!"

Voices. He was hearing voices. A stupid grin flashed under the visor. "Command, I'm here. Please stop yelling. Uh, over."

The radio calmed down. A couple faces grinned down at him, the shadow gone from Anna's rather pleasant face. He wouldn't call her Shakey now. Not a tremor ran through the woman, standing in armour plate, shotgun held to point far away from him. Rodriguez - Roddy, maybe - Or Rodney - haha, Rodney - kept an eye out but kept looking back to wave at him. Like he was blind. He shook his head slowly. Cute. "I'm okay." How was a soldier so young allowed out on the field?

"You weren't responding to comms," the radio hissed. "Status, Strike 1-Delta?"

Rodney - haha - pulled him up. His brains sloshed around like kittens in a washing machine. "Uhhh. Green. Good, sir. My audial receptors went a little funky, couldn't quite hear you. Sorry."

Muted snickering over the comms had a sharp look between Anne and Rodney. She thought it was hilarious. The kid seemed incredulous. "...Audial receptors, check." The voice sounded choppy. "Turning you over to Central Command. Good job out there, kids."

And it clicked out. He stared.

...Kids?

A light creak of ceramic and kevlar matched the weary shrug of Anne's rather chunky shoulders. Her crooked finger had him move like a live wire to follow. The impulses of these muscles felt strangely close sometimes.

"Pack it in. And Rodriguez, keep up. Don't want to get between the clean-up crew and - Ken."

He followed. Every step brought a blink up from sole to eyelids. So this was X-COM.

Save the - wait.

"The girl's okay, right? The VIP?"

"Duh."

Yes. Okay.

So. Save the girl. Shoot the bad guys. Get mind controlled, almost shoot a teammate and almost get shot himself.

Alvarez squashed his face into a boyish look of glee.

The only fly in the ointment, out of a few he could mention, might be the guy in charge. No chance for a dumb grunt to march up and take that position. The trees and pale houses vanished into dust clouds kicked up by the skyranger. He looked to his steel-capped boots, registering the clippetty clop of the squad on either side. A hand reached up to grip a loop without thinking. Alvarez let go like it bit him.

Sit down. Quit looking like a fool.

And this Commander? If that's who it was, which he knew to be the case, who else could give Strike 1 orders on the field without Central being involved, then he was being ordered around by someone with a terrible sense of humour.

Dad jokes. Only Big Sky got to call Alvarez a 'kid'.

As the engines kicked in, wheels clicking either side and equilibrium moving in an unsettling arc until they sat facing almost horizontal, the soldier gripped the seat and squeezed his eyes shut. Helmet. No view of his face.

_VWHOOM_.

Back to base. He couldn't wait to see it, for real.

It cost him everything to be here. Anne met his eyes and smiled. She seemed a little sad. So realistic.

Almost like she was real.

* * *

_A short story._

The author hopes you enjoyed the read. Another chapter may come; but with no schedule and no promises. _Vigilo Confido_.

And **God bless you, you're amazing**.


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